Role of Media After Death of Gauri Lankesh Raised More Questions Than We Could Ever Answer

Gauri Lankesh, a 55-year-old journalist from Karnataka, was shot dead on Tuesday evening and what followed was a massive outrage across the country.

A known critic of right-wing and Hindutva forces, Lankesh was also seen sympathizing with the Naxals at times and her ideologies didn’t leave many pleased. So, her murder was bound to attract opinions from the media sections.

But, the media houses were seen passing judgments rather than drawing opinions and that posed a question for the entire Indian media.

“Have the journalists turned into political spokespersons and are more loyal to their respective ideologies than their profession?”

Even before the police could come up with a statement, the left-wing journalists had already declared that the right-wing was behind the murder and kept blaming BJP for a crime that happened in a Congress-ruled state.

In the name of freedom of speech, in the name of defending democracy, and in the name of condemning the silencing of journalists, the journalistic fraternity itself forgot how to do journalism.

And this is what the seniorjournalist, Mohan Sinha was seen lamenting about on Twitter.

Mohan Sinha destroyed all such journalists and media houses with a series of tweets, the sole idea of which was to teach a lesson or two to all those who are reporting their ideologies and loyalty in the name of news.

He reminded every journalist of his/her responsibility by a single tweet which read – “You may hate a politician but don’t you have a responsibility to readers/viewers? Or don’t they matter in the larger scheme of things?”

Taking a dig at every one of this kind, he further added – “it’s not the emperor who has no clothes. It’s you. You’ve become an embarrassment to the rest in the profession.”

But, this isn’t the only problem we are facing as a country. The death of Gauri Lankesh proved two things: Firstly, Gauri Lankesh is dead. Secondly, with her, ‘Humanity’ of many Indians is dead too.

Soon after her death, there were many who justified her death. There was a twitter user whose language was so foul and cruel that the humanity died a ‘million’ times.

There was another twitter user who justified her death by saying – “Gauri Lankesh has been murdered mercilessly. Your deeds always come back to haunt you.”

You can support a particular political party, but how can you provide a justification for someone’s death? How can you speak in foul language about a dead person whose only fault was to oppose a political party you supported?

And, hundreds of such tweets followed. The scariest part is, such people are multiplying by every passing day. They won’t shut up. The situation is only going to worsen from here on.

And to make things worse, no one has an answer to any of these questions.

Sadly, the death of Gauri Lankesh has raised more questions than we could ever answer.